Fox and Hounds Daily Says Goodbye
With this article, we end publication of Fox and Hounds Daily. It has been a satisfying 12½ year run. When we opened in May 2008, our site was designed to offer an opportunity to those who wished to engage in public debate on many issues, especially in politics and business, but found it difficult to get placed in newspaper op-ed pages.
Co-publishers Tom Ross, Bryan Merica and I have kept F&H going over this time investing our own time, funding, and staff help. Last year at this time we considered closing the site, however with an election on the horizon we decided to keep F&H going through the election year. With the election come and gone, and with no sense of additional resources, we have decided to close the site down.
Fox and Hounds will live on, at least, with my articles collected in the California State Library.
On a personal note, I have spent over 40 years in California policy and politics. There have been some incredible high moments and some difficult low points. It pains me that politics too often is a blood sport, frequently demonizing the motives of opponents and using the legal system as a weapon in public discourse. At Fox & Hounds, we tried to adhere to the practice of giving all a voice in the debate, yet keep the commentaries civil and avoided personal attacks.
F&H offered the opportunity to publish different perspectives (even ones that criticized my writings!). We had success as indicated by the Washington Post twice citing Fox and Hounds Daily one of the best California political websites and many other positive affirmations and comments received over the years.
Tom, Bryan and I want to thank our many readers and writers for being part of our journey. The publishers of Fox and Hounds Daily believe that we added value to California and its people. We hope you agree.
Workpop and the Internet Job Placement Competition of 2016
Faster, faster; smarter, smarter, smarter, the competition among internet job placement companies intensifies in 2016. Hundreds of companies will be entering and exiting the field this year, as they compete promising greater success for job seekers, and/or a better hiring process for employers.
Workpop (www.workpop.com), based in Santa Monica, is one of the fastest growing internet job placement companies. Its development indicates the intensity of the competition and constant pressure to innovate. This development also indicates the creativity and drive that internet entrepreneurs in the job placement field are bringing to long-standing employment challenges. (more…)
Everyone Needs Access To Modern Emergency Communications
As a fire chief, “record-setting” years are not something I look forward to. But as of June last year, fire conditions in California were already the “worst on record.” By year’s end, the 2015 wildfire season was the costliest in U.S. history since 1960, with over $1.7 billion spent to fight the blazes. In September, my department was deployed to fight the Butte fire in Amador and Calaveras counties that ate 70,000 acres.
In California, man-made or natural disasters can happen anywhere at any time. Access to information is a matter of life and death. More now than ever, first responders need to be able to communicate with the public in real-time or we all risk being dangerously out of touch. (more…)
“No Bye-Bye-Jerry”—The Wink that was Heard
There was no wink from Gov. Jerry Brown when he said he wouldn’t involve himself in the Proposition 30 tax extension issue at his press conference Friday, but if you listened to the context of what he said you heard an audible equivalent to a wink. He said that Prop 30 was temporary; he wasn’t taking a position on the extension; he’ll let the people decide. Wink.
But he also said after reviewing a history of recent governors leaving behind difficult fiscal situations for their successors—(“bye-bye Davis; bye, bye Schwarzenegger”)—“No bye-bye, Jerry. Not if can help it.”
It’s about legacy and not leaving the next governor in a fiscal hole. For Jerry Brown, he’s been there. Leaving the governor’s office the first time in 1983, newly installed governor George Deukmejian found Brown left a billion-plus dollar deficit that he had to deal with. (more…)
Irreverent and Unsolicited Advice to Transit Advocates
Part 1: Strategies Not Goals
The other day I attended an excellent seminar “Future of Public Transit” sponsored by the Lewis Center at UCLA, attended mostly by transportation practitioners and students who want so badly to believe that public transportation is the wave of the future. I was struck by the desire of some presenters and many of the attendees to advocate doing “more of the same” for the future of public transit in the face of transit performance data which is truly abysmal and trends which do not support such optimism.
Now retired from a career in local government management including being the executive director of a county-wide transportation commission I am compelled to offer the following unsolicited advice to transit professionals, urban planners and college students who wish to become one or the other.
As these thoughts came to me as I listened to the seminar presentations my observations are somewhat random but are organized in the following manner. The first installment begins with the idea that transit in not a goal in itself and presents two non-traditional transit innovations – priced lanes and transportation network companies, i.e. Uber and Lyft – which will enhance transit service. (more…)
Vergara Decision: Remember the Children the Court Forgot
In 2014, California Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled that the state’s teacher tenure, layoff and dismissal laws violated the state’s constitutional guarantee of a quality education for every student. Judge Treu based his decision on compelling trial testimony, much of it from students, which he said, “shocks the conscience.” An appellate court recently reversed Judge Treu’s ruling, but it cannot reverse the harm those laws continue to inflict on California’s children.
The case, Vergara v. California, featured nine student plaintiffs, represented by Students Matter, a non-profit education organization. The students argued that the short probationary time before teachers received tenure allowed too many ineffective teachers to remain on the job permanently.
Also, the students argued that teacher layoff policies, where teachers with the least seniority were laid off first regardless of whether they were more effective than more senior teachers, hurt students whose learning is dependent on quality teachers. (more…)
We’re Not 40 Million Yet
California just had another flare-up of one of its chronic diseases:
Population overestimation.
I’ve written about this malady before.
We’re constantly overestimating how fast our population is growing. For years, we were going to reach 50 million by 2020. Then it was 2025. Gov. Brown has talked about us as if we were about to be a state of 50 million and needed to change our way of living, presumably casting off material things. (Gov. Schwarzenegger talked about 100 million people as if it were around the corner). And we keep repeating those figures, even as we live through an era of low birth rates and low population growth (it’s now well less than 1 percent annually). (more…)